I get this question across my desk a half-dozen times a day, and that’s just friends, family, and random emails sent to me. Obviously, as a Mac nerd, I care deeply about the subject, and decided to investigate.
Short answer: We’re as close as you can get without being able to attach a definitive date.
Long, rambling, almost-irritating-in-a-way answer:
First, let me tell you a story about another company. This company, whom I shall not name, sucks. They make a great technology product that claimed they had Mac support. And when we called them, they said, “Yes, we support Macs. Just buy an Intel Mac, install Boot Camp, install Windows, and we’ll support your product.”
Say what?!?
We’re Mac fans around this place. The Apple store in the area keeps us on speed-dial to find out how many machines we’ll be picking up this week. Our marketing, IT, Development, and executive teams are now all Mac-based (many recent converts, to my delight!). No one feels the pain of a lack of Mac support here than me, since I’m the local Mac Support guy, and I have to set up duplicate iTunes libraries for our people in Parallels so we can use our own product. It’s a solution, but certainly not the one I would want for our customers.
I was around during the infancy of our company, and I know we had planned a simultaneous Mac and PC launch. The code was originally written for the PC platform, and we thought that we’d hire an outside developer to port our code.
We talked to a number of well-known Mac developers, and even the guy that wrote Coverflow (well before that was co-opted by Apple), but great Mac developers are always super-busy. So, in-house it was. We were sure it would be ready by mid-April. I was so excited, that I decided to try to speed things up by making an icon:
However, we were continually rebuffed in our development cycles. Fix this, add that, etc. We pushed back to July. Then September. Then December. The question became, “How hard can it be to port your code to Mac?” The answer: “Very.”
Another question was “Well, now that Mac has moved to Intel, is it easier to port your code to Mac OS?” The answer was again, a surprising “No, more difficult.” There was something about switching our code from Carbon to Cocoa that slowed it down tremendously. I won’t pretend to understand all the ins and outs of coding for the Mac, but it’s a totally different animal. Our developers have been working really hard on a lot of things, but about 8 weeks ago, the Mac finally found its place at the top of the list.
Now, it’s Februrary, and I’ve been working in the office all weekend. Our entire development team has been there this weekend, as well, and I had to rub my eyes when I saw what they were doing.
Podfitness created its first workout on the Mac today. At this point, it’s a Dr. Frankenstein thing (you really don’t want to see programs before they’re tied up in their neat little packages, trust me), and of course there were some small issues, but the Mac made its first Podfitness workout today. That’s no small breakthrough.
It’s taken too long, I know. I think it’s funny that I can’t find any statistics on the percentage of users of iPods or other MP3 players use each player, but I would venture a guess that somewhere between 15-25% of iPod owners use a Mac. That’s a pretty big chunk of people that we’ve had to turn away over the last year.
Another thing that was noted (first by me, and subsequently by many, many potential Podfitness members): It’s ironic that a program designed for MP3 players, which Apple largely popularized, isn’t yet compatible with Apple computers. Rest assured, we’re very close to announcing a date that will finally end the tragic irony.
Note: Since starting this post, I received two emails from people hoping to find the status of Podfitness for Mac. I hope they find their way to this blog. Stay tuned for official announcements from Podfitness about this.
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HAHAHAAHA… but i have found my way to your blog…!! How you might ask? Welll… I googled podfitness Mac and this is the first hit. I do have to say though the new homepage for podfitness with the info on the new contest doesn’t get me to anything BUT info about signing up for the contest/challenge and doesn’t get me to any info about any of the workouts or anything.
I’m STILLLLLLLL WAAAAIIITING… and you know I have been since the first time I saw anything about podfitness in my email that I got from Power Music.
Sigh.
Sara
Sara, I do remember your emails from almost a year ago. I can’t apologize enough for making you wait for Mac support like this. We’ve also updated our homepage to both talk about the contest and our product, hopefully that helps now.
Thanks for being so patient, I promise we’ll make it worth your while!
When will videos of these Hollywood trainers be available for podcast?? Will audio workouts still be available? And will I have to download new software or will there be a simple patch that updates the current version? Thanks for your response
Kely, I’m not sure how close video support is. I do know that there is an inherent safety issue with people focusing on a video screen while working with potentially dangerous equipment. Podfitness is all about audio right now, and so far, the audio workouts seem to be working great. Tons of effort was made to keep the audio instructions clear and precise enough for anyone to follow and work out with correct form.
Hope that helps!
Has it been 7 days yet?
I’m terrible with surprises…so this last year of waiting has been excruciating!
We’re sooo close Brandon! I’ve been working out all last week off the mac, it will go public any day now.
Ron,
Ouch. It has been a year since we announced Mac compatibility (originally slated for April 2006), but that’s a fact that we hope is forgiven once this is all said and done.
Thanks for the update, Greg. My teeth are chattering in anticipation.
Patience is obviously my middle name..:) and spring is a wonderful time to start shedding those winter pounds from hibernation.
This is killing me
did you guys hit a snag? the website has been saying ‘within 7 days’ for well over a month now.
I check the website and this blog waaay too many times a day hoping for a miracle.
My new 3 month fitness goal starts on April 1. ugh!
Ron,
I apologize for once again setting unrealistic expectations. There are a few nagging issues with the Mac client, but we’re looking for a few testers to jump in and play with it from outside Podfitness.
Please drop me a line on Monday, I’m brandon [a t] podfitness [dot] com. I think you’ll be happy with the Mac client, even with its current shortcomings.
Hi Brandon,
sounds good. I’ll chat with ya monday.
thanks for the update!
Another week has passed and I hear no news. Anything happening? I hear friends rave about your product while I am left out in the cold.
Francisco,
Contact me at the email address above, and I’ll give you the lowdown.
If you missed it, it’s brandon [a t] podfitness [d o t] com.
Yeah, Ive been waiting (yawn) too, Ill send you an email on the lowdown. Ill test if needed!
Sara,
Sorry I didn’t see your comment until now, but we’ve picked up the blog and moved it to http://community.podfitness.com.
I’m sorry you’re still having issues! Podfitness for Mac has been going strong for a while now, if you’re having an error, we probably have a way to fix it. Contact me at brandon [ a t ] podfitness [ d o t ] com, and we’ll get you in touch with our support team, and some free time added to your account for your trouble.
One thing we do know is that something with iTunes Ringtones messes up Podfitness for Mac, and you need to temporarily remove any ringtones from iTunes while you mix music with your workout.